This thread is hilarious. It's hard to know where to start. I guess with the assumption that lack of meaning makes brute unhappy. This appears to be false. The assumption also seems to have a flaw, in that I think it is obvious that brute has created his own meaning to live by, my understanding is that brute instead refers to external meaning, like say an external right and wrong, that exists outside our minds and sends us to cosmic timeout when we are bad.

I agree with brute on the lack of apparent external meaning, but I have created plenty of my own meaning and live a happier life than most people. It is clear that brute has created his own meaning from many of his statements, such as not desiring to have copious amounts of sex and instead pursuing wanderlust. The two things mean different things to him. Meaning exists because brutes mind created it, the mind is basically a meaning generator, the only way to eliminate all meaning would be to eliminate all minds.

This is not depressing, just observant. The universe dying out along with all of us is not depressing either, just a constraint we live with, like not being born rich or beautiful, we are what we are.

halfmoon wrote:Loving something will involve dealing with shit at some point.

True.

Reminds me of a story I heard while taking a wilderness medicine course recently. A group of corpsmen attending the military version of the program found a pig living on the rural compound where the course was being held. They adopted it, named it, fed it the scraps from their mess and turned it into the group mascot. Toward the end of the course, after everyone fell in love with the thing, the training office gathered them into a group and - BLAM - shot it in the gut with a shotgun, then screamed, "SAVE PRIVATE RYAN!"

Fortunately, I am not in the military so I can get my slobbery love, shit, and whatnot from human beings when the need arises.

Augustus wrote:This is not depressing, just observant. The universe dying out along with all of us is not depressing either, just a constraint we live with, like not being born rich or beautiful, we are what we are.

BRUTE wrote:brute's not super into the whole God-thing, so he finds it hard to entertain that train of thought.

Fair enough. Pragmatically, however, notice that being able to do just that—entertain a thought without accepting it—could give you a competitive advantage in many areas; incidentally, although the attribution is disputed, Aristotle is said to have named that ability as the mark of an educated mind.

brute actually dislikes that quote about being able to entertain two conflicting thoughts. it's probably just imprecise.

holding conflicting thoughts at the same time is cognitive dissonance, and brute hardly thinks it speaks of a mind's education, but rather ignorance.

what could be said is that holding two seemingly conflicting thoughts, both of which seem on the surface correct, but allowing for the idea that at least one of them is imprecisely formulated or otherwise wrong, or the relation between them is unclear, is the mark of an educated mind. basically, skepticism.

halfmoon wrote:Loving something will involve dealing with shit at some point.

True.

Reminds me of a story I heard while taking a wilderness medicine course recently. A group of corpsmen attending the military version of the program found a pig living on the rural compound where the course was being held. They adopted it, named it, fed it the scraps from their mess and turned it into the group mascot. Toward the end of the course, after everyone fell in love with the thing, the training office gathered them into a group and - BLAM - shot it in the gut with a shotgun, then screamed, "SAVE PRIVATE RYAN!"

@Kriegsspiel, have you done live tissue training? From what they said, the emotional connection and the squealing of the injured animal is as close to a real world scenarios as possible. Of course, there are a few issues....http://thehill.com/opinion/op-ed/270346 ... e-training

As I walk through my apartment building and hear the animals of these young professions squealing for attention and scratching at the doors, I wonder how far apart the two are.

@halfmoon, actually, this is nihilism 101. The animals would not exist if not for people perpetuating the belief that they somehow inject an attenuated semblance of meaning into the lives of yearning young professionals who find themselves suddenly facing their first existential crisis of, "Is this all there is to life?" Better to face it than drug it. I could not make a profession of enabling.

Ego wrote:The animals would not exist if not for people perpetuating the belief that they somehow inject an attenuated semblance of meaning into the lives of yearning young professionals who find themselves suddenly facing their first existential crisis of, "Is this all there is to life?" Better to face it than drug it.

That's exactly how I feel about having children. To each his own drug.

This morning I rode in a beautifully efficient, synchronized rotating paceline with two friends. The three of us had been dropped off the back of a faster group so we worked together in a silent harmony that later induced in me several lingering hours of the feeling this man describes so well.

Ego wrote:@Kriegsspiel, have you done live tissue training? From what they said, the emotional connection and the squealing of the injured animal is as close to a real world scenarios as possible. Of course, there are a few issues....http://thehill.com/opinion/op-ed/270346 ... e-training

As I walk through my apartment building and hear the animals of these young professions squealing for attention and scratching at the doors, I wonder how far apart the two are.

No, just real world experience. I think that kind of training would have been useful. Not in a fun sense (though for the instructors gallows humor may be inevitable), but in preparing soldiers for war.

brute isn't certain that there is a test coming up, but he also isn't sure there isn't one coming up. presumably, different life situations will be the different tests, so success in overall life-fitness cannot be evaluated until life ends.

What is your primer on long-term health in non-WHO recommended diets? (book, society, special MD who is making money on disagreeing current model etc.)
Especially in terms of ,,Four Riders of Apocalypse of modern health" (hypertension, obesity, diabetes, ,,pump system" problems).
I ask you, because you tend to be the biggest proponent of high meat or high fats diets over there.
Although anybody who is capable of answer is welcome to do so.

Why do you prefer high meat diets? Praxeological answer ,,I do like them" is not enough!
What kind of high fat dietes have you tried?

I head towards following question.

What kind of frameworks/protocols/recommendations/authors do you use in your diet of high fat or high meat?
I want to have more specific answer than keto. It is pretty obvious .